Buttercups have recently seeded themselves in our garden and I have learned what tenacious plants they are – their delicate sun-yellow petals belie a root-spreading system that is astoundingly vigorous.  Having helped them into a rose pot, I had to empty it to remove them as they were throttling the rose. 

But they are charming and I am always reminded of a song we sang in primary school: ‘Daisies are our silver, buttercups our gold, these are all the treasures that we have and hold’…

The orchard was thick with sorrel and buttercup-sprinkled grass. 

Source: Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst: An unfinished history (London: Harper Press, 2009), p. 163